Guns don’t commit crimes
A letter to the editor from a former policeman said the Biden Administration is calling for more gun laws but should be outlawing criminals instead. In this conservative community, defending guns is easy, and blaming others for not solving the problems that illegal gun possession is easier, still. I wonder what course of action will work to decrease gun-related crime.
I have an even more ridiculous idea. Guns don’t commit crimes. Laws don’t stop criminals from obtaining guns. And writing letters suggesting either is just something to do while doing nothing about the problem. So, the only thing left to do is what we all can do, which is complain about what each of us should do but won’t.
One day, I was sitting at home, doing nothing, when my wife called me to look out our front window. Outside my front door were about 10 police cars with officers in protective gear and rifles in hand and sheltered behind vehicles. All of them were focused on a house at the end of the street. As I watched, a couple of the officers had an individual down, laying on the street. After a period of time, this individual was placed in one of the patrol cars, and the other officers entered a house and started removing bag and bags of stuff, evidence, I suppose. One of my neighbors told me more about what had been happening. The suspect had been threatening his grandmother, who lived in the house, because, I was told, he was doing drugs, The suspect had taken his guns out behind the house and was shooting at the house where his grandmother was. The police were called out to take care of the situation, and from what I saw, did a very good job of getting everything under control, and no one was hurt.
Relaxed gun laws would not have helped. More laws would not have stopped this crazy person. It may be that better parenting might have helped or that less encouraging for violence to solve problems would have helped. Both of those may have prevented the event, or maybe not. But it is for sure that someone sold that guy those weapons and made money from that sale. Someone sold that guy the meth that he was high on. And an undeniable connection is the greed for money that resulted in a crazy guy disrupting my peace and quiet that I was doing nothing to attain, on a nice easy day off work. I expected to read about the event in a newspaper or hear about the event on the radio.
But nothing ever was reported to the general public.
One last thing of note. There was a radio spot that was on the radio advertising that a gun store would do everything it could to sell guns to the people in this community. I had to call the local radio station’s call-in show and give my opinion about that advertisement. It did not take long for that ad to be replaced with a more responsible message.
Make of this what you will, but it came down to the local police force using their training to prevent a serious situation from happening. Good Job, sheriff’s department. And, thanks to the local gun shop for changing a very stupid advertisement.
I will say this as well. Our taxes pay for these officers and for the training they needed to handle events. It may be reasonable to expect gun sellers and guy buyers to pay higher taxes to help pay for the training and equipment.
James Ausmus
Leavitt Lake